Meet Me in the Afterglow (Purinz/Chaewon x Yunjin)

Realization

NOW.

Throughout Yunjin's life, there have been several moments that, while seemingly innocuous and unimportant as they happened, when she looks back on them with the perspective of time, act as significant turning points. Ones that mark a distinct before and after of different stages in her life. Ones that, had they gone differently or Yunjin had made a different choice, she wouldn't be where she is, wouldn't have the friends that she does, wouldn't have the life that she currently has. Ones that have played an important part in shaping her into the person that she is.

Some of them involve other people. Deciding to spend her freshman year in the student dorms for the real college experience instead of just staying with her parents or bankrupting herself on renting a miniscule apartment resulted in before and after Kim Minjeong. Joining the dance team during the second semester led to before and after Miyawaki Sakura. Allowing herself to be dragged out for Sakura's birthday in junior year marked before and after Nakamura Kazuha, Jang Wonyoung and Kim Chaewon.

Others don't. Others simply mark important changes in Yunjin's life. Moving to Tokyo for her masters degree is one. Subsequently moving back to Seoul after almost six years away from her home country is another.

Yunjin has a life in Tokyo, a pretty nice life with good friends and a nice apartment and a secure job at the university, but she misses Seoul.

She misses the night markets of Myeongdong and the New Year's Eve fireworks at Olympic Park and bar-hopping in Itaewon on a Saturday night and summer afternoons lazing by the Han River. She misses her parents, her brother, Sakura and Minjeong.

(Once, there was somebody else she would have added to the list of people most important to her. But Yunjin hasn't seen that person in years, and that person probably doesn't even think about Yunjin anymore, and well, Yunjin can't really blame her for that. She wouldn't want to think about her either.)

Hearing their voices on a phone call or seeing their faces through FaceTime is nice, but it's not the same as being hugged by her mom or dad, or being able to stop by her brother's apartment whenever she wants, or squeezing in between Sakura and Minjeong on Minjeong's tiny ratty futon that she refuses to get rid of to watch a movie while Sakura talks the whole time and Minjeong hogs the popcorn.

She misses Seoul, so when one of her senior professors pulled her aside back in April to tell her about a new study into the manufacture of synthetic hormones that Yonsei University is conducting, and that their biochemistry department has a potential opening for a permanent research assistant and that she could recommend Yunjin for the position, she only thinks about it for a day before saying yes.

She might have lived in Tokyo for the past five years, but it's not her home. Tokyo is good, Tokyo is great, a fresh start where nobody knew her right when she needed it. Tokyo is Yuri and Yena. She'll always look back on her time in Japan with nostalgic fondness and an appreciation for everything it did for her, but it isn't her home. Seoul is.

-

It's the last day of July when Yunjin flies back to South Korea, and she spends most of the two hour flight thinking about what (who) she left behind when she first moved to Tokyo all those years ago.

There's her parents and her brother, of course, who she hasn't seen in person since her brother's birthday last November, but she'll be staying with her parents for the time being, until she finds a place of her own.

Outside of her immediate family, she sees Sakura and Minjeong the most, primarily over FaceTime but the two of them have made a few trips to come visit her and Yunjin has made an effort to meet up with them whenever she's come back to Seoul. It's been maybe two years since she last saw Wonyoung or Yujin in person, and she can count on one hand the number of times she's seen Kazuha since— well, since Kazuha had to pick a side in the break up.